December 31, 2012

Secure Information Exchange and the Management of Excessive Data

By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor

In our data hungry economy, we can’t help but capture as much information on our clients, competitors, the market and supporting industries. While this information can be used for valuable business intelligence, it results in a massive volume of content that must be properly captured, managed and stored. This growing problem provides the perfect argument for the implementation of secure information exchange.

A recent Opentext blog highlighted how the data problem is quickly compounded by the exponential growth of business applications, e-mail, files and documents of all types. It’s a problem that demands an archiving strategy. That strategy must first focus on the enterprise content and applications used most within the organization and how each can be effectively managed with secure information exchange.

For many an organization, the most-used applications include e-mail, ERP and CRM suites, Microsoft (News - Alert) SharePoint, file systems and social or mobile content. E-mail solutions may be on-premise or in the cloud; business applications from large firms demand a long-term archiving strategy; SharePoint sites and mission critical business information must be effectively managed; file systems must be optimized for use; and social and mobile content provide for new forms of collaboration, but the resulting information has to be properly managed.

Separating all of these applications is too expensive and complex, creating a need for a centralized approach to the archiving strategy. When incorporated with secure information exchange, the strategy can deliver storage savings over the long-term at 20 to 40 percent when compared with siloed strategies. These savings are realized through a combination of rationalization of storage infrastructure, decommissioning of legacy systems and smarter decisions when it comes to storage.

When secure information exchange is a key part of the corporate data management strategy, close attention must also be paid to reducing overall storage costs. It’s not enough to simply make indiscriminate choices when it comes to data storage. Instead, this has to be a key part of the content strategy and it must be purposeful. Storage is no longer considered cheap when so much data is involved.

Consider the value of tiered storage as it supports the optimal storage mechanisms with a retention-controlled archive. This type of storage runs off line, online or even near line and only applications can access it. Single instance archiving drives efficiency another step for ensuring the same document is kept only once. This is especially useful where e-mail document attachments are concerned.

Compression will ensure content is compressed before it is written to the storage system. Legacy decommissioning helps to avoid the cumbersome use of multiple archiving repositories across legacy systems. Security measures and timestamps help to protect information, especially ensuring the current format is preserved for future uses, preventing the modification once it has been received for archiving.

While this merely brushes the surface of elements to consider when building a secure information exchange and archiving strategy, it at least highlights the importance of developing a centralized approach led by an intelligent strategy. Without it, your valuable data is at risk.

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Edited by Stefanie Mosca